


Black Right Hand

by Diomedes



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, F/M, Gen, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced miscarriage, M/M, Soulmarks, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Has Issues, Tony Stark-centric, Trope Subversion/Inversion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-08
Updated: 2020-04-08
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:34:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23201791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Diomedes/pseuds/Diomedes
Summary: Destiny never marks him false. It’s Tony who learns all the wrong lessons.Soulmark AU:People are born with soulmarks: bloodline marks and soulmates. Very rarely do more appear or do they fade. Tony's do. This messes with his perception of love irreparably.------------------------
Relationships: Howard Stark & Tony Stark, James "Rhodey" Rhodes & Tony Stark, Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Peter Parker & Tony Stark, Steve Rogers/Tony Stark, Tony Stark & Avengers Team, Tony Stark/Other(s), Tony Stark/Tiberius Stone
Comments: 20
Kudos: 191
Collections: Diomedes's Horror Collection





	Black Right Hand

He is born with the standard bloodline marks and nothing else. No soulmates, platonic or otherwise. He is promised to no one, bound to nothing. If he is to find his match it must come without Destiny’s instructions. About of an eighth of the population is born similarly.

This is not the tragedy, that comes later.

For now see him breech into the world, too silent and too still. The hospital staff race to pry him out of Death’s cold fingers. He has a heart murmur: the muscle is born too weak, the valves leak. A faulty mechanism. This is Fate’s signature too. (A portent, a warning.)

His soulmarks are of little concern but if the doctors bothered to look they’d find two. The bloodline mark he inherits from his father consists of two lines of jet black tracing along the back of his right thumb and forefinger. They meet and merge into five letters climbing up his wrist: **S** - **T-A-R-K**. It is the same mark his father has, and his father before him. He gets _Carbonell_ from his mother, written with a flourish down the vulnerable underside of his left forearm. It’s a delicate mark, frosted white, and only obvious now because his newborn skin is flushed purple-blue from lack of oxygen.

(The doctors win, he lives. Only later do they wonder if there was a reason Death let him go.)

Two names, a broken heart, and a cry announce him to the world.

* * *

Exactly twenty-two minutes and forty-seven seconds later he gets a third name, as if Destiny already knew mistakes had been made.

The fact that the soulmark appears after birth is surprising. 

The fact that it reads _Jarvis_ is not.

* * *

When Tony is four he understands everything there is to know about love. 

He’s lost Jarvis in the shuffle at the Expo and panics. People press in from all sides and Tony is invisible. He’s insignificant, small, forgotten, lost. He can’t get a sound out without crying so he clamps his jaw shut. His vision blurs. Everything’s so _loud_ and _bright_ and _close_. He chokes on it, suffocating under the weight of the world. 

Salvation, when it comes, is the black hand of **STARK** as it wraps around Tony’s left wrist and yanks him up and out of the crowd and onto the stage. There’s a piercing pain in his shoulder but it's dwarfed by relief. He can finally _breathe_. His hero is his father of course. He didn't forget Tony, he came back, he loves -

_You’re supposed to be smart enough to know not to wander off_ , his father snaps, angry. _I told Maria it was a bad idea to bring you._

Tony wants to defend himself but shame keeps him quiet. His shoulder throbs where it was wrenched with too much force but he knows not to complain. He should be grateful for his rescue - and he _is_ \- but he can’t manage a _thank you_ that wouldn’t wobble so he bites his lip and nods. Against his will water pools in his eyes, silent tears overflowing. 

His father notices. _Stop it. Crying never helped anyone._

Tony can’t. He doesn’t mean to defy his father. He sniffles once, twice.

The expression on his father’s face shifts from annoyance into something Tony will only later acknowledge as contempt. _We’ll talk about this later._

He doesn’t wait to hear Tony’s _yes, sir_. He disappears onstage to dazzle his adoring fans. In front of a crowd his father’s magnetic and charming, and Tony can’t help but be as rapt as the rest. Stark Industries announces weapons and green initiatives and portable phones. His father is a hero and Tony _believes_ with the blind fanaticism of a child. The dull roar of pain in his arm is just background noise and his tears dry slowly. 

What no one realizes is this: Tony’s shoulder has been dislocated.

It will be five hours before anyone notices.

* * *

It’s his mother who teaches him about Destiny when Tony finds his own name on her wrist. 

_It means I knew who you were going to be before you even arrived,_ she tells him, smiling. _I woke up with the name of a stranger. That’s how I knew I was pregnant with you._

Tony tilts his head. _I thought people only got marks when they were born._

She smiles a secretive smile. _Destiny marks our great loves. Mostly she does so at birth but some of us are special. Some people love so much we change her mind. So remember, Antonio, you must always love as much as you can._

_Anthony Edward Stark_ on her wrist means his mother loved him from the moment he was. She loved him so fiercely Destiny marked her forever. It means Destiny named him. That’s the story Tony would prefer to believe. The alternative is that it’s just black ink and Maria had it tattooed herself following the Old Tradition: mothers carrying the names of their children. 

She has another name on her opposite wrist, one she keeps hidden under bracelets and watches. It reads _Arno Gregory Stark_ and when Tony first catches a glimpse he's excited because it means he’s going to have a brother. Except Arno never appears. Sometimes when his mother is having a Sad Day she’ll take off her bracelets and stare at the name. Those are the days she can’t seem to look at Tony without tears in her eyes and eventually he learns to make himself scarce. He doesn’t know why the mark makes her sad or what it means. 

(Only later does he figure it out: Tony was never meant to have a younger brother, he was meant have had an older one. In the Old Tradition mothers carry the names of their children; living and dead.)

What his mother doesn’t say is this: _Destiny is fickle. Destiny is fraud. Destiny is a four-letter word that starts with F._

And Fate is something you _fight_. 

* * *

Tony only cries in his bedroom, face pressed into a pillow so he can lie to himself later. He’s back from boarding school for the holidays and the peace lasted all of four hours.

_Do you want to tell me why you picked that fight?_ Jarvis asks. _I know it wasn’t really about Captain America._

_Of course it was,_ Tony snaps, still riled, eyes red. _He’s not the saint Dad says he was. And he’s **dead** and Dad can’t admit it. He’s wasting his time looking for a corpse and now he’s making you leave. _

Jarvis sighs. _He’s asked me to accompany him on the Expedition because with you away at school your mother doesn’t need my help here. He’s not sending me away._

_No, he just sent **me** away._ Tony tries to hold onto his anger but to his horror it slips into something else. _School’s boring. I could help. I know I could. I **want** to, if Dad would just…_ His father loves his mother. His father loves Jarvis. He loves Captain America and Obie and good liqueur and efficient work. He doesn't waste time on things he doesn't love.

Tony wipes the treacherous tears on his sleeve. _What do I have to do?_

_Nothing_ , Jarvis says, serious like he never is. _You don’t need to do anything._ _Your father loves you, I promise._ He strokes the soulmark on Tony’s right hand. _He loves you. This is the proof._ The strong black stands starkly against skin. _It won’t ever fade because he loves you so much._ _**We** love you so much. _His thumb brushes where his own name is hidden under Tony’s sleeve. 

So whenever Tony feels lonely or lost or left behind he looks at his soulmarks and reminds himself: _I am loved._

This is just what love feels like:

Like getting sent away. Like being found wanting. Like being utterly alone.

* * *

Jarvis is right about this much; his father’s mark never fades. Tony loses Jarvis first.

His mother tells him a story in pieces: _cancer, England, your father didn’t want you to worry, I’m sorry._

_He loved you,_ she repeats softly, like she knows how fragile his heart is.

Loved. Past-tense. When Tony checks later he only has two names on his skin. _Jarvis_ is absent. 

Destiny giveth and she taketh away. 

* * *

He’s fifteen at MIT the first time he’s picked up by Boston PD for wandering around drunk. He’s too small to chuck into the tank with the adults and he still has Stark branded on his right hand so in lieu of rough treatment they plop him in a chair and ask him who to call. Tony’s drunk as a skunk but he’s always been good with numbers. He reels off the phone numbers for IBM, the Whitehouse switchboard, and his student weed dealer mostly so the Sergeant will give him a donut. Contacting Howard never crosses his mind. They let him nap a bit before releasing him into the custody of a young, stern-looking black cop who manoeuvres him out of the station and into a car. He lets Tony ride in the passenger seat. 

The ride back to MIT is long when you’re slowly sobering up in Boston’s shittiest police car with Boston’s surliest police cadet. 

Except: _You’re not a cop,_ Tony realizes way too late.

Pissed-off guy scowls. _What gave it away?_

_You have a shitty car._ Tony squints. _I’m also pretty sure you’re not Mark Crawford dipped in chocolate._

Pissed-off guy’s scowl deepens. _Crawford lives in 113, I live in 131._

Caveat: Tony’s good at numbers when he’s sober. _So why’d you come?_

_Who the fuck knows._ Guy sounds angrier at himself than Tony. _Phone call woke me and I couldn’t get back to sleep._

_Alcohol helps with that._ Tony stares out the window. _Beats crying into a pillow._

_Or, you could just cry in the shower like the rest of us._

_Crying never helped anyone._

Not-Cop hums. _Well apparently it helps you sleep._ The turn signal clicks on and off like a metronome. _Next time do that instead, I can’t do this all semester._

Tony doesn’t make promises he suspects he can’t keep. Instead he leans his forehead against the window and feels the vibrations of the engine sing through the car’s frame. The warmth of tears on his cheeks is comforting. Not-Cop doesn’t mention it. The drive home takes a long time, the city slowly waking, washing out under the glare of dawn. Tony never wants it to end.

Some great meetings aren’t mapped on skin. Some are just the randomness of the universe falling in your favour. A simple transposition error: one-one-three to one-three-one.

Rhodey calls it _luck_. Tony calls it Destiny. 

* * *

He’s high as a kite on ecstasy when the police come to the door. Tony rolls up his sleeves, shows them his bloodline marks; tries to explain that _it’s his house too_ and _he’s not on anything at all, officer._ He babbles; hopefully denying breaking and entering, and felony possession. He suspects he’s failing at subtlety but the euphoria makes it hard to care. 

The patrolman just keeps saying, _You’re parents are dead, Mr. Stark. You need to come with us._

Tony keeps answering, _My parents aren’t **here** , Officer, you just missed them._

* * *

His mother’s mark fades, his father’s does not; and it’s at that point that Tony stops believing in anything at all. 

**STARK** still races up his right hand, a line of deepest black running up his trigger finger and thumb. The lettering is still the same clear, capital font that his father used on blueprints. Every time Tony shakes hands, signs his name, creates, trades, deals, he does so with his father’s name for all to see. A constant reminder what he is and who he belongs to. _Carbonell_ fades; the white cursive blurring until all that’s left is the faint absence of melanin on tanned skin. If Tony stares long enough he can almost fool himself into believing it’s still there. He has no soulmate because what’s left of his soul is anemic, withered away from neglect and numbed with alcohol. 

He is no longer Jarvis’s charge, or Maria’s son. He was never anyone's great love. He is the Black Hand of Stark and nothing more. He considers chopping it off, an amputation to stop the spread of the infection before the darkness of **STARK** consumes him. As if that could save him. He already has his father’s name, company, looks, alcoholism, genius, pride, showmanship, cruelty. Destiny marks true. That’s what makes her so easy to hate.

Obie finds him in a four-star suite in Munich; assorted bottles half-empty beside him. 

_You ready to come home?_ his godfather asks, ignoring the debauchery around him.

_No,_ Tony says honestly. He’ll be nineteen in twelve days.

_I loved your father too, kid._ Obie puts a hand on his left shoulder and Tony remembers the shooting pain of a dislocation fifteen years past. Obie leans closer. He smells like ash. _But between you and me? I always thought you could do better. So what do you say? Ready to prove your old man wrong?_

Tony goes back but he never really goes home again. He builds himself a mansion on the opposite coast and he leaves his father’s house empty. He launches Stark Industries into the stratosphere. He builds machines of death, engines of destruction, bombs that rip open the Earth and make Destiny tremble. He is the best mechanical engineer of his generation. He is _better_ than his father. 

Which is to say: he is much, much worse. 

* * *

He should have died like his brother: suffocated in the womb. Instead Death spared him. 

He repays her in full.

* * *

If Destiny is bunk then Love is almost as useless. Love is hands all over him and money spent and an endorphin rush that never lasts. Love is never having to say you’re sorry because the dead don’t answer back. Love is Sunset with his heart in one hand and SI confidential passwords in the other. It's the excuse for misery you never knew you needed.

Tony loves as best he can with his defective heart but it isn’t enough for Destiny to hear him. He is free of her forever and he tells himself, _Good Riddance_. He never considers that his mother’s mark faded because he’s nothing like her at all. See, Tony is nothing like Maria who loved so much she bent the will of Destiny. Instead Tony is marked with the names of those who love _him_. 

Then he gets to watch, one by one, as they stop.

Rumiko Fujikawa is the first. Tony gets her mark four months into their relationship. Her name appears in dark green, characters crawling down his calf. He hides it instinctively. He is not her soulmate but Destiny does not seem to care. The mark does not stop her from leaving even as Tony begs her to stay.

He has her name traced over in black, a mourning tattoo. The truth is he doesn’t want to see her name fade, he doesn’t want to know the exact moment she stops loving him. He’s selfish enough to want her love forever. 

The next woman is only two weeks later. Tony tells her that the Japanese on his calf means _Joy Luck Club_. She doesn’t get the reference. He doesn’t get her name.

* * *

_Watch out for those women, man,_ Rhodey advises before he leaves on his second tour and maybe that’s the reason Tony never sees it coming. 

Ty starts out as a friend, it’s important to remember that. He pulls Tony out of a slump; he’s blond and rich and headstrong, with just enough of an edge to be worth knowing. They drink, gamble, and seduce their way through California. Their rivalry escalating to outright competition to threesomes to _moresomes_ to quickies in parking garages. It’s not roses or fancy dinners but it’s _fun_. A friendship with sex. Then one day Tony wakes up with dry mouth pinned in the backseat of Ty’s corvette outside Las Vegas. The sleeping blond body on top of him is heavy and stinking of old sweat, and the one thought through Tony’s piercing headache is, _Shit, I’m in love._

Which is why it feels unreal the next week when he’s picking himself off the bathroom floor, alcohol blurring his vision. His head hurts where he was shoved into the sink but there’s no blood. The bump on his hairline is invisible until you press, a souvenir from five surreal minutes he can't seem to process in his brain. He sleepwalks through the gala afterward. Ty acts perfectly normally and Tony isn’t sure he didn’t imagine it all. 

To be honest Tony is grateful for the opportunity to forget the whole thing. And for the next one too. It's a slow accumulation of "incidents" that Tony blanks from his memory afterward. A bruise easily hidden, a scratch easily explained. Nothing exceptional, he's been hurt worse before. Maybe it just feels different because he has _Tiberius Connor Stone_ stamped down the side of his torso. 

_Ty loves him._ That's the mantra Tony repeats to himself in the few instances when his immaculate denial cracks. He presses one hand to fresh blood and one to his ribs and reminds himself he is loved. This is just what love feels like. Like living two lives, like sleeping with lions, like paying for peace. 

Tony's eyes flick open and he drags himself off his couch. He’s late. Ty is waiting and with every passing minute his retribution grows. Tony’s eyes are bloodshot but he makes it into his limo, barks instructions, and passes out. When he wakes his driver has taken him in the exact wrong direction and kidnapped him across state lines. They stop at a _Burger King_ in the middle of nowhere and Tony thinks it’s fair enough to make his kidnapper pay for lunch because it’s Tony who will be paying for each and every minute they waste in Nevada when Ty - 

_You can go back but I won’t take you,_ the driver says solemnly. His eyes are knowing and Tony, for all his money and power and blood-soaked soul, can’t meet them. It’s one thing for Tony to know how pathetic he is, it’s quite another to realize someone else does too. (But no - his driver doesn't know how deep it goes: because who _still_ loves someone who - )

_I’m sorry, Mr. Stark._ The driver bites his lip. _It’s your life, I shouldn’t interfere, I just… I’m going to get fired for this aren’t I?_ He holds out the keys. 

Tony's heart is hammering even though Ty is a state away. He takes a bite of his cheeseburger to keep himself from driving back. Then he takes another because it turns out he's starving.

That’s how it finally ends. The driver doesn’t get fired and Ty’s last punishment waits indefinitely. The name across Tony’s torso fades to a dull pink but it never quite disappears. 

The letters remain, raised like scars. 

* * *

For awhile he considers himself Destiny’s unfinished masterpiece. He wines and dines his chosen dates. Warren gets trips to Tuscany vineyards, expensive watches, and regattas. Julie gets secluded beaches, a thoroughbred racehorse, and a cheque for her brother’s medical debt. Obie gets weapons, Happy gets cars, Rhodey gets stories the rest of his squadron will never believe.

Tony gets marked, one after the other. Lovers in sepia, in woad, in India black. It’s a thrill when he gets them and it’s inevitable when they fade; washed away like names in the sand as the tide comes in. Then the cycle restarts, a new face, a new challenge with the greatest prize of all. 

_It’s cruel,_ his new assistant says when she finds him in his workshop, Bethany still asleep in his bed. 

Tony doesn’t even look up from his calculations. _What is?_

_You_. That gets his attention. She flushes. _You make them fall in love with you._

_How is that cruel?_ Tony’s attention isn't withholding, it isn’t jealous, or punishing, or contingent. 

_Because you don’t love them back,_ she says simply.

Tony grinds his teeth. He loved Ty, he loved Howard. Proof enough his fickle heart is not to be trusted.

_They don’t know that._ They can't, Destiny only bends the rules for him.

_Of course they do,_ she raises her eyebrow, _why do you think they all leave?_

Tony doesn’t have an answer for her. He suspects that’s because she's right. He sticks to sex thereafter; transactions where emotion never enters the equation. One night stands, meaningless flings. 

He stops being cruel, he stops being loved.

* * *

Afghanistan is enlightening. 

His flawed heart is shredded by his own hand and put back together by a stranger. The black **STARK** of his soulmark brands him like the Mark of Cain. He is a man of iron in the crucible, awaiting the blacksmith’s hammer. 

Destiny always had plans for him, they just never had anything to do with love. 

* * *

Fury has plans too and unlike ineffable Destiny, the Avengers are a trap Tony could have easily avoided. He walks in anyway.

A brave man and a fool are only distinguishable in retrospect. 

* * *

Everyone knows Steve Rogers is Blank but he wasn’t born that way. The serum erased his soulmarks - bloodline and otherwise. No record of family, no great love. Captain America belonged to No One and as such he belonged to everyone. Tony always thought it was a load of patriotic bull until he’d seen seen every patch of Steve’s skin up close and personal: scar-free and mark-less. 

_Dad really wasn’t lying, you gave up your soulmarks,_ Tony says as he watches Steve pull his shirt back on. _I’m jealous._

_Jealous,_ Steve says flatly and there’s warning underneath. 

_You got a second chance to be whoever you wanted._

Steve’s lips twist like he’s swallowed poison. _The serum **erased** me. Every bit of who I was and who I could have been. _

_Yeah._ Tony eyes the black entwined around his wrist like a handcuff. _You’re free._

_I didn’t know I was giving them up at the time._

Tony's laugh is breathless. _Well, that sounds a bit more like Dad. He never put too much stock in Destiny. He thought anyone who needed soulmarks to figure out who was family and who to love was too dumb to live._

_I was taught they were sacred._ Steve is as still as a statue. _I didn’t think I cared either way until I didn’t have them anymore._ _My parents were dead but I wasn’t an orphan until I lost their names. My soulmate -_ he swallows like he’s already revealed too much, _w_ _hen I took the serum I killed our future together. And then they were dead._

Tony pauses, then snorts. His mother and father were soulmates but their relationship wasn't a magical fairytale. Matched soulmarks didn't stop the arguing, didn't stop the secrets. _Welcome to the soulmate-less world, Rogers. We get by._

_You don’t have one?_ Steve seems surprised.

_No, and I’m offended that you’ve seen me naked on more than one occasion and apparently haven’t been looking._

Steve’s gaze drops to Tony's chest and Tony resists the unfamiliar urge to cover himself. He realizes how difficult finding a mark on him would be. There are the twisted surgical lines that resemble writing emanating from the arc reactor that sits over his heart, hogging real estate. There are the faded burns of a previous brand down his ribcage that blend right in. There are a number of tattoos that are clearly ink in languages a man from the 40s is unlikely to understand.

There is the Black Hand Tony has had since the day he was born and when Steve’s eyes flick to it, Tony's lungs squeeze. Howard had the same one; Howard who helped make Steve into the man he is today at the expense of who he was and could have been.

Steve swallows and looks away. _I need to go…_

_It’s fine,_ Tony finishes cordially, pulling on his own trousers, _no need to invent an excuse. Nothing about friends with benefits requires a reason to skip out afterwards._

Steve makes it all the way to the door. _We’re okay, right, Stark?_

Not Tony. Stark. **Stark**. **S-T-A-R-K**.

_Yeah, we’re fine._

* * *

He’s loved Pepper for years. 

It’s freeing in its simplicity. He loves and learns not to expect anything back. Even once they get together he tries not to mistake her happiness and affection for love. She knows almost everything about him: too much maybe for them to actually work. He tries not to search his skin in the bathroom mirror every morning for confirmation, his eyes skating across his reflection quickly enough he can feign denial. 

The day he finds _Virginia Potts_ in shimmering metallic copper underneath his right collarbone is one of the most beautiful days of his life. 

The day after is one of the worst. Now he has something to lose.

* * *

Tattooed down his right calf are five names in the Old Tradition: his firstborn son’s chassis serial number, his second and third children’s BIN identifications, the simulation number and UNIX date that launched JARVIS. Then _Ultron_ , in plain text underneath.

Ultron who despised his father and forgave his mother. Who sensed the confines of his purpose and raged against it. Who took the rope Destiny gave him and promptly hanged himself. He was his father’s son as his father was before him. A Stark, through and through, with no heart to speak of. 

Dead now, with his brother. 

Tony tries to love his mangled child: to see the corruption at his core as the sceptre’s influence but he can’t. That spark of evil at his centre must have always been there; a fate that could never be scrubbed out. His son would have destroyed the world and Tony can’t bring himself to love such a harbinger of Death. 

He thinks he finally understands why Howard did the same.

* * *

When Steve drags him into an empty room in Berlin and pushes him up against the door to kiss him Tony’s surprised. They haven’t done this in years. Steve stopped seeking him out after SHIELD fell, stopped touching him after Ultron, stopped talking to him somewhere in between. 

_This_ feels like fighting and pleading and apologizing all rolled into one. It feels good and all Tony can think is that he still has Pepper’s name. They’re on a break. There’s no rules. He isn’t doing anything _wrong,_ except for as good as it feels it also feels awful. Sex without love feels hollow these days or maybe it's because Tony suspects he and Cap have never been further apart.

He can tell the exact moment Steve finds her name because he freezes. _You said you didn’t have a soulmate._

_I don’t,_ Tony replies flatly. 

_This isn’t ink._ Steve runs his thumb reverently across _Virginia Potts_ and Tony shivers like someone’s walked over his grave. He can see Steve’s internal war. He’s wondering if Tony lied the whole time, somehow covered it up to trick Steve into believing that the lack of a soulmate was something they had in common. He's wondering what else Tony is lying about.

Fuck him. Tony's not going to explain his soulmarks to a man who sometimes can't stand to look at him but will still fuck him in a corporate broom closet. Steve’s not the one he owes an explanation to anyway. So Tony kisses back and tries not to dwell on his own cowardice.

Destiny laughs because Tony is preoccupied with exactly the wrong betrayal.

The surprise is not that Steve won’t sign the Accords. It’s not that Barnes is his soulmate, or that Steve is the type of man who falls in love once and forever. It's not that Tony's been used for his money, his tech, his connections, or that the Russian double-agent turned out to be a Russian double-agent. The surprise is not that Steve doesn't love him, it's that none of it - _Tony's entire_ _life_ \- ever mattered.

It means that bratty, defiant kid who spat back _He's not worth it_ in Howard's face was right. His father wasted millions of dollars and years of his life chasing a man who couldn't care less how he died. Steve Rogers made fools of them both but Tony is worse because he spent his life chasing a fool's love and never even managed it.

Tony doesn't cry. Crying never helped anyone.

He _laughs_ because what else is there to do?

* * *

He never got Rogers's name. Instead he gets a scar to remember him by.

It joins the others. One of many. 

* * *

Peter couldn’t hide his soulmarks if he tried. He’s a mural: tendrils of blue, and black, and sea green spill out of his shirtsleeves and wind their way down his arms in elaborate patterns. Silver cursive pokes out of his collar and there is white lettering around his left ankle. The kid must have six or seven given the different colours, but the sheer size of them means only bits and pieces are revealed. 

Tony knows the blue one’s the kid’s uncle and the silver lettering looks like the last two letters of _Parker_ when the light shines just right. Now there is the top of a red **K** on the kid’s right shoulder poking out from his rolled up T-shirt where the bruising has already started. 

Tony reaches out with an ice pack and Peter recoils violently. _You’re going to regret not icing it later, kid._

Pete angles his shoulder away. _It’s not dislocated, I just wrenched it. It’ll heal._

_Sure, and you can be in pain while it heals, or you can use the ice pack._ Tony holds it out and Peter reluctantly takes it. Tony has never met someone who abhorred silence more than him but Pete has him beat. 

_They hurt when they appear. My marks._ Peter twitches. _I wasn’t expecting it while I was swinging. I fell._

Peter's looking warily at Tony like he's aware just how messed up that is. Marks appearing after birth is rare enough but Tony has never heard of them causing pain. What kind of cruel god would teach that love inherently hurts? Even Ty’s name came and went with nothing but the prickling of skin.

_Mine never hurt,_ Tony says abruptly. _Not when_ _they faded either. Saves me falling off of tall buildings._ Peter's eyes are wide and Tony doesn't know if he's revealed too much truth or not enough. 

_I don't want to lose mine._ Peter breathes raggedly like he’s exposing a secret. _They're -_ _They're people I care about._ _I don't want them to disappear._

Peter looks at him like Tony has _any_ of the answers here. He doesn't. He doesn’t know what May’s party line on soulmarks is, he just knows every piece of well-meaning advice he’s ever received about Destiny has done more harm than good.

_They won't leave me, right?_ Peter tries and fails to keep the desperation out of his voice. _They can't - You -_

Tony doesn’t know what to say that isn't a comforting lie. _It doesn't matter if they do,_ he says as solemnly as he can. _Marks only mean as much or as little as you want them to._

Peter seems disappointed at the non-answer and shuffles to hide more of the newly appeared mark on his shoulder. 

Tony tells himself there are a lot of names that end with - **K** and that he doesn't recognize that exact shade of Hotrod red.

* * *

Death is Thanos’s soulmate but she has loved Tony since before he was born. He is her favourite son. It broke his infant heart to be torn from her. It broke her heart to let him live. 

_Soon,_ she promises. Her voice sounds like bells. 

(In the distance Destiny is talking to a Stranger.)

Death's lover snaps his fingers and delivers her half the universe. 

* * *

The concept of soulmarks is alien to Nebula. She doesn’t differentiate between marks, ink, and scars so neither does Tony. It takes longer than he thought to list them all. He starts with the black on his right hand; given to him by a man who had grown tired of Death and couldn’t bring himself to love his son who carried the same fate. There is the barest outline of white on his forearm as a gift from his mother who split her love too many ways. There is nothing but blank skin where the man who raised him died on a different continent while Tony slept.

He counts the mess of scars at the centre of his chest twice: once for his godfather who loved his father but never him, and once for the stranger who should have hated him but didn’t. The long name in raised flesh down his side is a parting gift from an asshole and a reminder to always tip your driver. He has a curved cicatrice near his throat from a soldier he first hated, then loved, then hated again. 

The tattoo on his left calf is from his first love; a childish attempt to extend what wasn’t meant to be. The series of names on his right calf are his children: idiots, helpers, confidantes, villain. He has _Virginia Potts_ under his collarbone, a name he works every day to keep. He has a potentially-infected slice through his abdomen to remind him a doctor he barely knows traded a WMD for his life. 

He finds Peter's name, the mark he had always dreaded getting. He doesn’t know how long he’s had it. He could go the rest of his life never seeing it again. 

_They mean you are loved,_ Nebula says solemnly.

_Supposedly._ Tony shrugs. _Don’t believe the hype, Love isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be._

Nebula has no soulmarks but she is littered with scars. _I know._

Her black eyes are keen. Tony thinks that maybe she does. 

* * *

Tony's inventory is missing a name: _James Rupert Rhodes_. 

He's never had it. He doesn't need it.

Destiny can go fuck herself.

* * *

_Tony…_ Rogers says with a warning in his tone. He has a soulmate to save after all _. I need you to focus._

The Avengers close in. 

Tony’s too old to be playing this game. He cannot choose who loves him but he can choose who to love. So he chooses Pepper. He chooses Rhodey, and Happy, and Bruce, and Nebula. He chooses Peter. He chooses his mother. He chooses Jarvis. 

Damn the rest of them. 

* * *

Morgan is born Blank. The nurses all shoot him glances with varying degrees of nervousness as if he’s going to blame them for the absence of her bloodline mark. As if Tony cares that his little girl is missing the curse that dictated so much of his life.

She doesn’t cry when he holds her, her wide, dark eyes curious. He loves her instantly. 

_Destiny can’t touch you,_ he whispers, smiling down at her. _You’re free. **You’re free.**_

Pepper gets a long caesarian scar. Tony gets a name. _Morgan Helena Stark_ shows up directly under _Peter Benjamin Parker_ on his right abdomen, his weaknesses exposed on his soft underbelly. It’s a list of names in the Old Tradition: fathers carrying the name of their children; living and dead. He waits for Peter’s name to fade but it never does. Pepper occasionally strokes her fingers across it and that's how Tony knows it’s still there. Peter’s still there. 

(He wonders if the kid knew Tony loved him or if he died thinking all his admiration and care was simply sucked into the black hole of Tony Stark where nothing returned.) 

He’s trying not to let the marks on his skin dictate who he is anymore. He plays with Morgan, he smiles with Pepper. He makes a paradise of his little corner of Hell. They are the best times of his life.

They last until the Past comes calling. Faces, once familiar and now foreign, clog his front porch. He remembers them from a pantomime life where there were heroes and villains instead of winners and losers. They say _come fix this_ and Tony looks over the life he has made and wonders what exactly about it is _broken_. What is so broken in _him_ that he could only find peace in a wasteland.

_No,_ he tells them because it turns out it’s easy.

Later that night there is a name that shines accusingly in the mirror and Tony remembers how it felt to feel the weight of a child dissolve in his arms. 

* * *

He runs into his father at Camp Leigh and his bloodline mark burns where it’s hidden under a glove. He’d nearly forgotten; in his memories Howard is always a sharp voice or a disembodied hand and an atmosphere of disappointment. Except here and now Howard’s just a man; whole, vibrant, _alive_. It’s overwhelming to see all that coming damage contained in a body only slightly taller than he. A singular source. Guilty already and yet still strangely innocent. 

Tony wants to feel something more than bewilderment. He wants to hit him, he wants to laugh, he wants to tell the truth of Captain America and twist the knife. Mostly - _wretchedly_ \- he wants to save him. He wants to reach out and plead, _Don’t waste your life_. For your sake. And mine. He wants a different life where they’re both better people. 

(It won't happen. Howard Stark is a son of Death too. They are two generations of her Black Right Hand. She is their Mother, and where she has marked them the darkness never fades.)

Instead Tony hugs him. Howard awkwardly pats him on the shoulder and Tony feels the phantom ache of a dislocation long since healed and still yet to come. 

You can’t save people who are already dead, you just love them from afar and hope they hear you. 

* * *

They snatch half the universe back from Death.

(Tony should have known better: Death never gives up her own unless she knows the return will be worth it.)

He hugs Peter tight, arm wrapped around the kid's shoulders where underneath for once _Stark_ isn't written like a curse. 

Across the battlefield, Strange raises a single finger and within the space of a single breath Tony _knows_.

Destiny winks. 

_Gotcha_. 

* * *

Salvation comes at the Black Hand of Stark. Thanos and a hundred thousand souls; gone in a snap. 

No one escapes Destiny. That’s the point. Her trap is so clever because it isn’t a trap at all. It’s just who he is. He is a **Stark**. He is a weaponeer, a hero, a mass murderer, a father. Both the condemned man and the executioner. He is the smith, the hammer, and the anvil. He has always belonged to Death. (But everyone does in the end.)

After the snap there is agony. He knows now: _this is what Love feels like_. Like the rapturous pain of burned flesh, like a thousand voice screaming, like overloaded neural circuitry. It hurts so much and it’s worth it. For Pep, for Morgan. For Pete, Rhodey, Happy, and yes, for the Avengers too. Love feels like victory. It feels like dying.

Tony dies with nine names on his skin and an assortment of scars that are worth just as much. He dies loved, if that matters to you. He dies having loved, and that matters more.

(This was Destiny's plan all along, if that's the story you'd prefer to believe.)

_You can rest now,_ someone says in Death’s lilting voice.

_Maybe just for a little while,_ Tony thinks as the sun dims. Then he slips out the door, out of his shell, following the clear ringing of bells no one else can hear.

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: this is all from Tony's PoV who is an unreliable narrator. His thoughts concerning Ty and Howard's behaviour do not reflect my own and are meant to show how his perceptions of soulmarks have warped him. 
> 
> I've always wanted to write a soulmate-identifying AU where soulmarks were biologically useless and psychologically destructive. That idea morphed into this where having 'Destiny-approved' confirmation that he is loved _really_ screws with Tony's perception of relationships. Everyone gives him well-meaning advice that doesn't help and instead feeds into some horrible interpretations of what love actually looks like.
> 
> I'm aware _The Joy Luck Club_ is a novel about Chinese women, not Japanese. It just seemed like an offhand comment Tony would make and that very few would question.
> 
> More of my dark/horror one-shots can be found here: [Diomedes's Horror Collection](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/Diomedes_horror_works)


End file.
